


Conversations Under The Full Moon

by paupotter_4869



Series: The Most Important Thing. . . [20]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Guard Duty, Heart-to-Heart, Late Night Conversations, One Shot, Patrol duty, quiet night, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28430751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paupotter_4869/pseuds/paupotter_4869
Summary: Joel survives the Bloater attack, but Ellie hasn't recovered from the fright just yet. On a night where she's paired with Dina for guard duty, the two girls have a heart to heart. Ellie's turmoil about revealing her immunity might be brought up.Rating for strong language.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Series: The Most Important Thing. . . [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033674
Kudos: 25





	Conversations Under The Full Moon

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own anything. All credit to Naughty Dogs. Enjoy :)

Quiet nature surrounded her. 

There was no rain. Only a soft, cold breeze rose now and then, messing her hair, blowing the jacket off her shoulders, and carrying the sweet smell of berries from deep inside the forest. 

A distant owl howled. Small animals—squirrels, possums or rabbits, more than likely—moved and hurried through the naked, damp, slippery ground and tree branches, and twigs snapped now and then, making Ellie jump every single time. Birds flew across the sky, casting strange shadows over the snow and trees. 

It was a black and white world. The moonlight, untampered in the cloudless sky, shed light over an incredibly extensive area beyond the wall, over the clearing and the woods. Beyond the fence, the woods and the mountains were dark figures barely distinguishable. Everywhere she looked, inches of snow covered the ground, trees, mountains. 

These were, without a doubt, the very best conditions for guard duty—and Ellie _should_ know, she’d been on many guard duties since she and Joel came to Jackson. At times, the wind was so strong she could hardly stand. Or maybe the rain was so heavy she didn’t see two feet beyond her nose, and her ears couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. Or temperatures so cold she could hardly stop shivering, much less hold or use a rifle properly. 

Tonight, was the opposite. No wind, no rain or snow, no clouds. . . This was possibly one of the easiest guards she’d ever been in. They should be able to spot and hear any upcoming threats well in advance. No one would ever come to any harm. Under such circumstances, she should be able to relax, enjoy a somewhat quiet guard night. 

Still, she was nervous.

Couldn’t shake the feeling something ominous could happen at any second. A savage animal, a horde of Infected. . . It felt like doomsday got nearer and nearer by the hour. And she wasn’t the only one who felt like that. Everyone was having a hard time finding the confidence to relax, lately—ever since Joel. They were even more aware of the risks lurking out there, of the fact that luck could literally run out at any moment, and it would catch them all off guard. 

Ellie kept both of her eyes on the clearing and the first line of trees, that rifle loaded and ready in her arms, plus the Beretta pistol on the waist holster. She didn’t allow herself a second to stretch, yawn, or pace up and down the watchtower and fight off the cold and the tiredness. She knew she couldn’t spare a single second—one second was too much already. A one-second distraction was all it took. One second could mean the difference between life and death. 

That had almost been the case of Joel. She was not going to make the same mistakes as he and Tommy did. She was not going to let her guard down, endangering the whole damn town. Needless to say, she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in so many fucking days. 

Wherever she crossed paths with him, she’d heard Doc mention things like PTSD and the hypervigilance state, but Ellie didn’t quite believe any of that crap. There was no soul alive on Mother’s Earth who didn’t suffer fucking PTSD or something along those lines. She just needed to perform her duties to perfection and make sure the town was safe. No more Infected attacking any members of the community. She would see to it that every single townsfolk would sleep all night long, safe, and sound. This was a safe haven for all the townsfolk and she’d vowed she’d do everything within her prowesses to keep it that way. Also, she _owed_ it to Joel—he deserved a full night’s sleep of rest after the attack. 

By the corner of the eye, she caught movement to her right. Ellie didn’t react; she knew it was only Dina, paired for guard duties tonight. 

Dina looked calm and collected, comfortable up there on the fence and watchtowers. Her demeanor and state of mind were the exact opposite of Ellie’s feelings and struggles as of late. Her gun hanging comfortably from her shoulder, although Ellie was certain Dina was fast enough to ready the gun and fire within the blink of an eye if the need arose, she walked with confident steps and her head held high. Dina was coming back from checking the perimeter, and she would report that she hadn’t spotted any threats across the fence. 

Her word wouldn’t be enough to soothe Ellie’s nightmares, though. She sighed as Dina walked up to the watchtower and reported exactly what Ellie had predicted. It hurt her—it would certainly hurt Dina if she were to express her concerns. She trusted Dina, they’d been paired on patrols and survived many adventures together to mistrust her skills or her word at this pint, and still, her promise that everything was quiet and peaceful did not help Ellie calm down nor relax. Very few things could help her, really. 

“Great. Good job,” Ellie said. 

Dina rested against the fence and took one good glance at Ellie. She couldn’t help but notice the underlying sarcasm in her tone. 

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“I haven’t,” Ellie confirmed the suspicions—why should she lie now of all times? And why should she lie to Dina, of all people? 

“Fuck, Ellie, why didn’t you say so? Jesse and Maria never would have accepted you taking on guard duty. . .” 

“Well, it wasn’t _their_ choice, was it?” Ellie exploded. “I’m fucking tired of everyone deciding for me as if I was still a stupid and defenseless, little girl. I needed to get out of that house, and so, here I am. D’you have a problem with that? Are you sending me home?” 

“Of course, not. You can stay all week, for all I care. Just. . . Calm down,” Dina said, resting a hand on her shoulder—begging her to simmer down. It was true she’d raised her voice way too much. They were supposed to keep quiet while guard duty, unless there was an emergency and they required assistance. Better not to raise the alarm out of a quarrel. 

“Thanks,” Ellie appreciated, resting against the fence again. 

They fell silent for a minute. Dina was giving Ellie room for continuing her rambling if she needed to do so, whereas Ellie focused on breathing in and out. There was the little and tiny detail that Ellie couldn’t leave Dina all alone up there for guard duty, three-people rotation were compulsory, but both girls failed to mention so. 

She was just so damned fucking tired. Watching over Joel for days on end until Joel woke up, and then some more as to believe him recovering was not a product of her exhausted mind, had begun taking a toll on Ellie's mind and body. She truly needed to take a nap. Joel had suggested so just before she’d left for guard duty—not that he knew what she was up to, either way. 

“Doc said Joel’s getting better?” Dina asked softly, trying to ease what she knew to be Ellie’s worst nightmares. Trying to get her to focus on what was important, on the good news rather than the terrible ones. 

“He is,” she confirmed, a soft smile on her lips. “In a few days, he'll have permission to leave the house. That’s why he threw me out of there, probably.” 

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Dina argued. “Maybe he just wanted you to get some very well-deserved rest, too?” 

“Oh, really? Are you a mind-reader now?” 

“No, I do not claim such capabilities,” surrendered Dina, lowering her voice again. 

Her shoulders dropped, she rested against the fence, some inches closer to Ellie. She knew Ellie was just directing her exhaustion at her in the form of angerment, and didn’t complain. She could take whatever Ellie threw at her. She’d been doing so since Joel’s accident, and Ellie’s need to push her away. 

“Hey, whatever the reason, you got to see this,” Dina said, waving all around. “So maybe you should be doing less bitching and more thanking.” 

At that moment, Ellie’s first instict was to search for menaces—wild animals or Infected nearby—before she finally understood Dina’s meaning. She was referring to the full moon, the landscape, the wonderful night. Dina had a way of seeing the beauty in the most common things surrounding them, a power Ellie lacked of on a regular basis, but was unable to master at all, lately. She only saw the darkness and the monsters lurking fucking everyone, the perils that could jump out of nowhere and kill them in the blink of an eye. Joel would be really fucking proud of her, now. She finally learned this one lesson. 

“Right. Very beautiful, no doubt. Remember, however, that the lunatics and dangers come out on the full moons. Not to mention the werewolves—deranged creatures roaming the woods, murdering the innocent, and leaguing with the devil.” 

“What’re you talking about?” Dina chuckled. 

“Just stuff I saw in some of Joel’s old movies. Did you know that the word ‘lunatic’ comes from the Latin term ‘luna', which translates—you guessed it, as ‘the moon’?" 

“Latin?” 

“I don’t really know. A language people spoke thousands of years ago.” 

“So, a dead language, and a bunch of stupid folklore from two freaking decades ago. All of it, _extremely_ relevant on this day and age, then.” 

“Piss off, will you?”

Ellie sighed, too tired to argue with Dina over anything at all. In spite of her exhaustion, and despite the fact that her eyes had never wandered off from the landscape around them throughout the entire conversation, still waiting for threats to appear out of thin air, she’d tried to scoot closer to Dina. 

“Fuck, it’s cold.” With that, Ellie had said the magic words as to have Dina wrapping her arms around her. Next, she pulled back gently. They walked backward until they could sit on the bench, a little bit more protected from the weather, and snuggled close to each other. 

She wasn’t going to lie, Ellie _had_ missed Dina’s warm, comfortable, kind embrace. She’d unfairly pushed her away day in and day out the past few days while she worried over Joel. And although Dina had promised she understood and that she could give her some time and space, Ellie worried that she needed to make it up for her, somehow. The thing was figuring out how to fix the whole thing. 

It didn’t seem she needed to make much thinking or penitence, as Dina wrapped them both in a spare blanket they always had on the watchtower for occasions like this one. As in, occasions where the two people on guard duty were freezing to death, not trying and fucking failing to flirt. 

“Better?” Dina asked, snuggling closer. Ellie breathed in deeply, unable to stop herself, and a smile, against all wishes, grew on her lips. It wasn’t only her touch she’d craved. It was her smell, the loose hair falling down on her. Her voice, her banter, her wit. 

“Definitely,” sighed Ellie. She was in the seventh heaven, actually. Not that she would ever utter such a cheesy line out loud. “Did you know, too, that the only way to kill a werewolf off was using a silver bullet?”

“No, I did not. Would that trick help us with an Infected?” Dina pondered. 

“I don’t think scientists are too worried about solving that one. Where would you get a silver bullet from, anyway?” 

“Fair point,” Dina conceded with a shrug. “Still, my scientific conclusion is that you watch way too many movies with Joel.” 

“What can I say? He misses the good ol’ days,” Ellie said, trying to imitate Joel’s accent, which escaped him more and more, especially while talking to Tommy. Her poor efforts only made Dina laugh, and Ellie rejoiced at the sound she hadn’t heard in what felt like a lifetime ago. 

“Who doesn’t, really?” Dina asked in what Ellie assumed to be a rhetorical question for which she didn’t bother to offer an explanation. "Do you think we’ll ever get to live a peaceful life as they did before? Without Infected?” 

“Not sure,” sighed Ellie. “I don’t think life could ever go back to the way it was. What do you suppose, that the Infected will eventually kill each other and disappear? Whereas humans will endure?” 

“Maybe? I don’t even know,” confessed Dina. “Doc and some people were talking about some stuff the other day. . . About previous contagious illnesses—I know, I know, kind of bad timing and all. But they used this term. . . Herd immunity, I think they called it.” 

Ellie tensed at the word 'immunity' but hid it in a shiver—Dina didn’t even look up at her. Where was she going with this? Had she seen her bite at any point? No chance in hell, Ellie was, per Joel’s persistence, extremely careful about it. Was Dina hinting that somehow she’d figured out what she was? Was she opening the door for her to confess? 

Could she confess? How would Dina—and everyone else in the community, for that matter—react to her being immune to the illness that had killed so many beloved ones already? Could she stay in Jackson after word got out? Was the truth really worthy risking everything they had now, their lives here in Jackson, the relationships and bonds they’d formed? Could she ever forgive herself if she lost Dina? This wasn’t something she asked for, she was just born with that fucking genetic characteristic. Could Dina fault her for that? 

“They said immunity could be a fairly logical biological evolution,” Dina kept going, unaware of the emotional turmoil she was putting Ellie through. “And that maybe, one day, enough people could be immune for us to stop worrying. . .” 

“Did they, now?” Ellie couldn’t find any more coherent words to contribute to the conversation—her mind was going blank. Hell of a night Dina had chosen to bring that one subject up. 

“Something along those lines, yeah. You know I get lost when people start on medical jibber-jabber.” 

“Do you believe it’s possible?” Ellie asked very slowly, testing Dina’s reaction and trying to read every change in her face. 

For fuck's sake, she needed Joel to recover already, and talk this through with him. She could guess what his answer would be, of course—the fewer people knew about her immunity, the safer she’d be—but still, she couldn’t shrug this whole thing off. Not when she and Dina were. . . Well, not when she hoped she and Dina could become something _more._ Could she lie to her for the rest of her life? How could she hide something as big as that from her? 

“I think it’s a neat bedtime story to tell kids, not much else,” Dina said, shrugging—without realizing she was shrugging off most of Ellie’s dreams and hopes, too. “I’ve yet to hear about one person who’s immune to this fucking virus.” 

_Fuck, this is exactly what Joel was so worried about,_ Ellie thought, internally freaking out. _What am I supposed to say?_ Lie? Keep lying all of her life? Or perhaps telling the truth was the best course of action, letting the community decide if they could live with an immune? 

“Do you?” Dina pressed her after she’d remained silent for a minute or two. 

“Sorry?” 

“Believe it. Herd immunity and all that crap.”

“I’ve got no fucking clue,” Ellie somehow got the words out, deciding that a careful and patient course was wiser for the moment. “I do know we’ll be fighting Infected for a long time to come, though.” 

Dina misinterpreted her reaction and her face dropped, replaced by a concerned and shocked expression. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Fucking bad timing.” 

“No need to apologize,” Ellie said, taking her hand as she tried to calm down herself—Dina simply thought the conversation had brought nightmares concerning Joel’s injury and his very narrow escape from death’s claws. 

There was no need to tell her about her immunity tonight. Once she did, her whole life would change, too, and possibly, also Joel’s, if he tried to protect her against the townsfolk, and would, no doubt, leave with her if popular vote dictated her to leave town. She was not ready to lose everything she had. She couldn’t lose Dina or Joel, or the family she’d found here in Jackson. Not yet. Probably not ever. Although she realized that the lying and the hiding her immunity would eventually get the better of her. At some point, she would need to come clean. If that would happen next week or two decades down the line, she’d have to see. 

“I understand. We all want better than this.” 

As if on cue regarding the difficult world they lived in, Dina and Ellie heard footsteps and the rustling of leaves. In the blink of an eye, the two girls dropped the jackets, stood from the bench, prepared their guns, and aimed at the general direction of the noises. Ready to fire if a Bloater showed a single toe out of the woods. 

There was no need for such extreme measures, at least not for the time being, though. It was only a male deer roaming the woods. Through her scope, Ellie could see the animal chewing on some grass he’d found buried under the snow. 

It was a wonderful specimen, though. He stood there, regal and majestic, at the top of his mountainous realm. Its antlers and tines grew and entwined high in the sky, barely scared of humans’ scent nearby. 

For that, Dina and Ellie needed a second more to lower their weapons. Shooting in the middle of the night would only bring their friends and neighbors nightmares. It would not be appropriate firing their weapons right now, alerting everyone else. Within moments, the entire town would come out of their homes and reach the watchtower, every available weapon in hand, to fight off whatever Infected was nearby. Even Joel would push through the pain and his injuries and come to help. 

No, given the current circumstances, it was better to wait. In the morning, they would tell the hunting party about the deer—with any luck, they’d be able to trace the animal’s trajectory and hunt him down, giving him a quick, honorable death. 

“I’m going for a walk,” Dina said then, hanging her gun from the shoulder again. 

Her back facing Dina, Ellie put away her gun, too, and grabbed the blanket they’d dropped on the floor, wrapping herself tightly in it. She didn’t offer to go in Dina’s stead or to accompany her—she was simply too tired to move from the watchtower. 

“See you in ten minutes,” said she. “Howl if you need anything.” 

“Will do,” chuckled Dina. 


End file.
